XenocideThis was pretty well-made. He very meticulously avoided showing any recent releases, while letting the camera linger on stuff like the Iron Man 1 poster and the Xbox 360 games, so we'd all think this place was frozen in time circa 2008.

Old_ZirconThose fuckers drove all the good stores out of business even though they had the worst selection.

As convenient as streaming services can be, I have found them to be an impractical and sometimes shitty replacement for the old video rental chains. Whenever I want to watch a movie, Netflix is not streaming it two-thirds of the time. And in the rare blue moon where I get excited over a new TV show, like Ash vs. Evil Dead or Better Call Saul, it won't exist on Hulu because Starz owns that show.

For that reason I have the Netflix disc plan included in my subscription. It's passable enough these days...when the discs don't arrive a week late, covered in cracks and cat bites. Ya'll should have seen the Hunt for Red October disc I got in the mail. Jesus fuck.

Digital streaming also requires Internet access with a persistent wi-fi signal. If my router decides to punch out in the middle of a show, or for whatever fucking goddamn reason it rains outside, goodbye stream. A lot of the appeal is built on never having to leave the couch, right? Then why am I getting up to finagle with the router and then fumbling with the streaming service to get it working again?

You'll also want put down the $30 or whatever extra to get a Chromecast. God forbid your steaming apps are on a Playstation or Xbox console around Christmas time, when those frothy mouthed little bastards decide to DDoS the servers for 28 days to make children cry. Being at the mercy of Sony and Microsoft means putting up with their houses full of easily breakable shit.

The video rental stores had their late fees and the inconvenience of getting off one's ass to drive over there, but goddamnit they usually had my video there, and I didn't need a working Internet to play the physical media with the physical playing thing. If the VCR ate my tape or the disc was broken, they were nice enough to trade me for a working one.

And yeah, they were half the reason the NC-17 rating was a death sentence. Netflix doesn't care if your movie is NC-17, and they've got a great selection of steamy foreign titty movies besides. That's a plus, I guess.

Family Video, on the other hand, has a porn room.

Cena_markFamily Video has a porn room? Two things surprise me about that. That there's a brick and mortar video rental chain that thrives in 2016, and that for having such a Reagan era "family values" sounding name it still does adult videos.

dairyqueenlatifahI live in Columbus, OH, and Family video are literally the only video rental stores left here. All the other chains, as well as the mom and pops, have been gone for years now. But every time I drive past Family Video, it's still alive and well, and I always say to myself "How in the fuck are they still in business?"

Bus_Aint_Cominalso, here's a handy list of every blockbuster still in operation: http://www.blockbuster.com/franchise.html

dairyqueenlatifahIf the below site run by someone who obsessively monitors the fate of Blockbuster is to be believed, that list is extremely outdated, and there are only 12 functioning Blockbuster stores left in existence.

http://cybernight.elementfx.com/buster.html

infinite zesthmm.. it doesn't surprise me that brick and mortar video still exist; where would hipsters go to be observed by other hipsters that they appreciate Lars Von Trier and such? And, some folks still don't have the internet, or if they do, can't figure out Netflix, like my own parents.

But I'm pretty sure that Blockbuster went totally kaputt some years ago, maybe as late as 2010. There were still some stores liquidating their inventory and some really good deals, especially one relatively new BluRays. In fact, I lived across the street from one in 2008. So I remember when they did finally go tits-up, like Hollywood Video half a decade before it, it wasn't mourned like the death of a mom-and-pop store forced to shut down by Amazon, but it was at least newsworthy, some dumb end-of-an-era nostalgia included.

So I dunno, I was friends with this coke dealer who owned a BBV via franchise; did people just keep the name and the logo after the last store closed? Questions questions questions.. mankind is capable of 3 questions.